مدیریت استقرار سیستم های ERP در شرکتهای متوسط ​​با استفاده از عوامل چندگانه

Despite the many advantages of Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) systems, they do not as yet represent a clear and successful management tool to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), or at least it is not as easily implementable by SMEs. This paper shares some insight into a research aimed at identifying the strategic and operational requirements of SMEs in the South East Asia (SEA) region. It highlights a set of organizational, operational and supply chain related interdependencies in SMEs which in many aspects influence project management success and methodologies deployed in ERP systems in SMEs. An agent-based model for coordinating the management of enterprise resource in SMEs is also introduced. This model expounds on how the various enterprise resources in an SME can be organized, interfaced and managed. By drawing upon this model, we can relate to how SMEs can better project managed ERP systems in their usually informal systems.

Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) system offers a viable management tool to helping companies in particular manufacturing enterprises manage their resources. The exponential growth in technologies and innovation in manufacturing and information processing is pushing companies into a new paradigm shift. Numerous companies who have successfully implemented ERP systems testified to its ‘life-saving’ importance. However, SMEs must not blindly embrace ERP projects. The improper project planning and poor adoption of ERP may mean realigning the company’s comparative advantage position which SMEs can dearly afford. Thus far, ERP projects adoption has been the domain of the larger organizations. Features and business process flow have been designed based on practices in the large organizations. Consulting and project management methodologies are normally specified based on such experiences. The needs, operating requirements, logistics fulfillment and financial capabilities of the SME manufacturers are vastly different from that of the large and medium sized manufacturers. Adoption of information technology by SMEs in managing their ERP projects is also limited. While ERP is sufficiently flexible to cope with the general manufacturing enterprises, we need to take a closer look at the strategic and operational needs of SMEs before we can properly develop a project management strategy for them.

This study highlighted the significant SORs and in- terdependencies in which SMEs operate under. These jointly impact how SMEs utilise and project manage standard ERP systems within their organizations. Some of these SMEs SORs (summary below) are in many ways departures from the norms of mainstream large companies. Unless these deviations are well understood, managing ERP projects in SMEs will continue to be slow, painful and at times even unfruitful. 1. Low Levels of Organizational Hierarchy. 2. CEO Involvement in Operational Decisions. 3. ‘‘Blurred’’ Departmental Walls. 4. Production Modes in SMEs. 5. Planned Forecasts vs Real Forecasts. 6. Rate of Changes in Orders. 7. Short Lead-time in Manufacturing. 8. High Staff Turnover. 9. Customers Special Demands. These research findings provide inputs into further development of a three-level ERP resources management architecture comprising of three types of agents: execu- tion agents, planning agents and coordination agents. To be successful in applying such an architecture to a multi- variant environment, such as the enterprise resources planning in a SME, one must be concerned with the underlying structure of the model, the naturalness of its representation of the system, and the verisimilitude of such a representation. This agent-based model represents the internal behavior of each individual within the SME. One agent s behavior may depend on observable gener- ated by other individuals, but does not directly access therepresentation of those individuals behaviors, so the natural modularization follows boundaries among indi- viduals. This is important as it gives the new model a significant advantage in handling complex projects such as ERP projects [8]. The agents correspond one-to-one with the individuals (e.g., departments or sections within the SME) in the system being modeled, and their be- haviors are analogs of the real behaviors. These two characteristics make agents a natural locus for the ap- plication of adaptive techniques that can modify their behaviors as the agents execute. Multi-agent systems offer an innovative way to relax the constraints of centralized, planned and sequential control [13]. They offer good models for systems that are decentralized rather than centralized, emergent rather than planned, and concurrent rather than sequential. The autonomous agent [11] approach replaces a cen- tralized control system with a network of agents, each endowed with a local view of its environment and the ability to respond locally to that environment. In this agent-based model, each SME has its own set of agents. An agent s internal behaviors are not required to be visible to the rest of the system, so SMEs can maintain proprietary information about their internal ERP projects. This matches the real world functional structure and the organization of the agents is a good mapping of the topography of the SME enterprise. This three-level model can thus be applied to solve organi- zational dynamics issues in enterprise resources plan- ning projects in SMEs. Understanding of this three-level model will thus aid the SMEs in their project manage- ment and implementation of their ERP systems. In ad- dition, agent-based approach can also be deployed in the development of sophisticated systems such as ERP systems where intelligent functional areas can be desig- nated using multi-agents.